Workers’ Compensation and Chronic Pain Management

If you were injured in a workplace accident, or if you are suffering from an occupational illness, you may want to discuss your case with an experienced Delaware workers’ compensation attorney from Silverman, McDonald & Friedman. Please contact us to schedule a consultation at one of our offices in Newark, Seaford or Wilmington.

Workers’ compensation, as a program that compensates employees who have been injured on the job by providing a partial wage-replacement benefit and medical expenses naturally deals with people who are in pain. Managing that pain for injured workers can be a challenging prospect for the worker, their doctor and their employer’s workers’ compensation insurance company.

Managing pain for injured workers is something of a balancing act between helping workers heal so that they can get back to work, and guarding against addictions to pain medications. Addiction and overdose are two of the consequences of relying on prescription opioid painkillers for injured workers. Opioid pain medications account for more than 25% of workers’ compensation drug claim costs each year in the United States according to the National Safety Council (NSC), which also reports that about 60 people die each day from opioid pain medication overdoses– that’s about 22,000 people each year. Opioids are being overprescribed, the people taking them often become addicted and when they get cut off the prescription medication they quickly move on to illegal drugs, which are cheaper and easier to get but deadly.

An NSC presentation called “A Hidden Workplace Epidemic” reports on pain management and prescription painkillers for injured workers. The NSC says that some of the risk factors for opioid overdose include:

• Taking high doses
• Using the drug for an extended period
• Using several different forms of opioid pain medicines
• Mixing the drugs with alcohol, sleeping pills, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications
• Sleep apnea, heart failure, obesity, COPD or other respiratory conditions

The challenge is that the body quickly develops a tolerance to the drug and over time it becomes less effective at killing the pain. Meanwhile the body develops a dependence on the drug in order to function. In their presentation about the impact of prescription painkillers in the workplace, the NSC shared these stories about workers who were injured, were prescribed painkillers, overdosed and died:

• A worker who was injured in a work-related car crash was prescribed 15 milligrams of oxycodone four times a day. He died two years later of an overdose of oxycodone.
• A worker who mixed alcohol with his multiple prescription medications to treat the pain from an industrial injury died in his sleep. The cause of death was determined to be the combination of alcohol and prescription drugs.
• Another worker injured his shoulder and neck and was prescribed 7.5 milligrams of hydrocodone every eight hours. He died later that year of a hydrocodone overdose because he exceeded the prescribed dose.

To stem the tide of opioid over-prescription, abuse of the drug, addiction and overdose, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, which contains recommendations for the use of opioids in treating chronic pain (which is pain that lasts for three months or longer) and does not include cancer treatment, palliative care or end-of-life care. In 2016, when the CDC guidelines were released, they estimated that about 11.5 million adults were using opioid pain medications for daily pain relief. Because of those guidelines, many of those patients have had their doses lowered or they lost access to opioids completely.

The Pain News Network is conducting a survey to determine if those guidelines have improved the quality of pain care, if patients are being treated with safer alternatives, and if the guidelines are having any impact of the soaring rates of opioid abuse. There has been somewhat of a backlash on the part of patients who were suddenly unable to get their hands on their pain meds.

If you are suffering in pain after a workplace injury and you are facing a dispute with your employer’s workers’ compensation insurer about you pain medicine, or any other aspect of your claim, a compassionate workers’ compensation attorney from the law firm of Silverman, McDonald & Friedman is ready to help. We can protect your right to fair compensation and to the appropriate medical care for your workplace injuries.

At the law firm of Silverman, McDonald & Friedman, we protect the rights of injured workers. We help you build a compelling case if you need to appeal a denial, and we advocate on your behalf if you are involved with a dispute about your benefits. Please call 302-888-2900 or fill out our contact form to schedule a consultation today with a trusted workers’ compensation lawyer in Wilmington, Newark or Seaford today. We are on your side.